1. Field of the Invention
An apparatus consistent with the present invention relates to a mounting pad for a disk drive and, more particularly, to a mounting pad for a disk drive that is capable of installing the disk drive in an electronic system, attenuating external vibrations, and sealing the disk drive.
2. Description of the Related Art
A disk drive, which is one type of data storage device, reproduces data from a disk or records data to a disk. In a hard disk drive (HDD), a read/write head mounted with an actuator records data on or reproduces data from a recording surface of a disk, which is rotating. The read/write head moves to any desired place over the recording surface of the disk while keeping itself afloat from the recording surface of the disk by a predetermined distance.
A small-sized disk drive is used in a portable electronic system, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), a camcorder, or an MP3 player. The small-sized disk drive may be classified as either an insertable/separable type disk drive or an embedded type disk drive. An insertable/separable-type disk drive can be easily inserted into or easily separated from an electronic system. On the other hand, an embedded-type disk drive is fixed to an electronic system so that it can be protected by the case of the electronic system. In addition, the embedded-type disk drive has a relatively simple structure.
In general, the embedded-type disk drive is fixed to the electronic system using screws, in which case, external shocks and vibrations are directly transferred to the embedded-type disk drive through the screws. Therefore, the bearings of a spindle motor in the embedded-type disk drive may be damaged or a read/write head may collide with the surface of a disk.
In order to solve the above problems, a variety of vibration attenuators have been developed and one of them is illustrated in FIG. 1.
Referring to FIG. 1, a disk drive 10 includes a disk, a spindle motor, which rotates the disk, a read/write head, and an actuator, which places the read/write head over any desired portion on the disk. The disk, the spindle motor, the read/write head, and the actuator are enclosed by a base 11 and a cover 12. A damper 13 is formed at each corner of the base 11 so that external shocks or vibrations can be attenuated. A screw hole 14 is formed in the damper 13. The disk drive 10 can be installed in an electronic system by inserting screws 15 into screw holes 14 and tightening the screws 15.
As described above, the effects of external shocks or vibrations on the disk drive 10 can be attenuated to some extent by the damper 13. However, the disk drive 10 can never be free from external shocks or vibrations so long as it is fixed to the electronic system using the screws 15. In addition, since the disk drive 10 has a very small size, the screws 15 are also designed to be very small. However, small-sized screws are generally very expensive and thus, manufacturing costs of the disk drive 10 will increase. Moreover, it takes a considerable amount of time to fix the disk drive 10 to the electronic system by tightening a plurality of screws 15.
A gap between the base 11 and the cover 12 is hermetically sealed so that the disk, the spindle motor, the read/write head, and the actuator can be protected. More specifically, the gap between the base 11 and the cover 12 is hermetically sealed by installing a gasket between the base 11 and the cover 12 and screwing the gasket using three to five screws 16 or by taping the gap between the base 11 and the cover 12.
As described above, different elements of the disk drive 10 are used for installing the disk drive 10 in the electronic device, attenuating external vibrations, and hermetically sealing the gap between the base 11 and the cover 12 and thus, unit costs of production and assembly increase.